I have a friend whose car uses recycled cooking oil as fuel

The idea of using discarded cooking oil as fuel appeals to a lot of people. It reduces waste while creating an alternative to petroleum   based diesel fuel.

I have a friend whose car uses recycled cooking oil as fuel. He is thinking of setting up a biodiesel fueled diesel generator, and he could produce 15 kilowatts of power with it. He figures that it will be enough for a house. I am not so sure, I had a boat and it had a 15KW generator. when I installed it I was sure it would be enough. It took me about 3 months to admit it should have been bigger. I think 25KW would do it. I have seen this over and over. People don't realize how much electricity they really use.

However there are a few problems with using cooking oil as fuel. To use this cooking oil as fuel operators quickly learned that unless they wanted excessive smoke and rough running motors or gumming up the fuel lines, they had to run extra filtration on the vehicle. They also discovered that running it straight meant that they needed to heat the fuel.

Here is the site we use for a lot of the biodiesel ideas we use in the shop.

In the cold weather there was starting problems because the cooking oil thickens, this can be solved by starting using diesel and switching fuel tanks after the engine is warmed up. This is a bit of a pain in the ass so most people blend their fuel at about 50% diesel and 50% waste cooking oil.

Greaseoil, or used vegetable derived, cooking oil as fuel for diesel powered vehicles, and can be obtained virtually free of charge from most restaurants.  They have to pay to get rid of it so welcome anyone who will take it away free.  The thing here is you must set up a schedule and keep to it.  They do not want to have to guess when you will come around.  They are counting on you to dispose of the stuff in a timely manner, so if you don't do it they will tell you not to bother coming back.  It will only take one overflowing container for them to decide that they should let one of the big reduction companies handle the contract.